Stats. Pay too much attention to them and they can drag you down. Ignore them completely and you can miss a trick. But until someone pointed out one particular stat to me the other day, I wasn't especially aware of it. Apparently, I average 64 in the first innings in Test cricket and 23 in the second. While I'm delighted to be averaging so many in the first dig, the other figure is probably something I need to look at. Mind the gap, as they say.

As with all stats, these ones need to be put in context. All batters know you can generally have more of an impact on the course of a match by scoring heavily in the first innings. Take Steve Waugh. To don my anorak for a second, I gather he scored only two fifties in the fourth innings of a Test in his entire career - and you could hardly say he didn't pull his weight.

As a team, we generally look to post 450 to 500 in the first innings and then set the bowlers loose to take 20 wickets. All six of my Test hundreds have come in the first dig, so I guess I'm playing my part. That brings pressures of its own, of course. In the last Test, at Old Trafford, I came to the crease at a stage when another couple of quick wickets could have landed us in a bit of trouble. Yes, I missed out on a hundred, but that innings of 97 was the most pleasing of my career because of the circumstances. The pressures in the second innings can be totally different.

The pitch might be going up and down or it might be turning, or you might be batting for a draw. I'd be interested to know how some of the Australians get on in the second innings compared with the first.

Having said that, I do have fond memories of a couple of second-innings knocks. I got a 90-odd in the third Test against Pakistan at Lahore before we collapsed, and there was an 87 at Perth in the winter after I'd made a duck in the first innings. But you could say that my performance at Old Trafford was typical: 97 followed by two.

Does a batsman relax, however unintentionally, after scoring heavily in the first innings? It's possible, and it's something we talked about after Manchester. We were in a position to crush West Indies but we let them get back in. However well Darren Sammy bowled, we missed an opportunity to be authoritative. And when we led by 400 with seven wickets left, I'd say it was the only point of the series where we might have thought "we'll win this".

From there, we should have got 500 or 520, but we took our foot off the pedal for half an hour. Perhaps we didn't have enough respect for them. Australia wouldn't have let that happen. We, I, all of us need to be just as hungry second time around. Something I learned after being dropped against Sri Lanka last summer is that every innings is vital.

It's true that at No6 there aren't always many opportunities to get in a second time if you do your job properly in the first innings. And when you do get in, you often need to play the situation. At Lord's, for example, I was caught at third man trying to set up a declaration. At Old Trafford, Sammy got me in that purple over. But you have a gut instinct that tells you when you have helped the team, and in both those matches I knew my first-innings runs had put us in strong positions.

They're funny things, averages. We all try not to pay them too much attention, but you can never get away from the fact that cricket is a statistical game. The truth is you can hardly ever escape them, what with all the programmes flying around the dressing-room. But if you concentrate on your game, the stats should sort themselves out. A second-innings hundred in this Test would be nice. Then again, I hope we only have to bat once. Sadly, you can't have it both ways.